The Vadavalli police here late on Monday registered a case against A. Ganapathy, Vice-chancellor of Bharathiar University, under three provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015 on a complaint filed by a woman belonging to the Scheduled Castes alleging that she was deliberately denied post-doctoral fellowship.
The complainant N. Srilakshmi Prabha, who had completed PhD from the university in 2011, applied for the post of assistant professor in the Department of Biotechnology in 2016. She alleged that the university did not follow the reservation norms in filling up of vacancies and denied her a job.
Ms. Prabha was later granted a post-doctoral fellowship by the University Grants Commission (UGC) for a tenure of five years in 2017-18.
The UGC had directed the woman to upload her verification proforma through the University Registrar before July 31, 2017. Subsequently, Ms. Prabha submitted the verification proforma to the Registrar through her mentor on June 26.
She alleged that the university, instead of forwarding her proforma to the UGC for verification, sent her a letter asking her to change the institute.
According to her, the University failed to forward her verification proforma to the UGC for a second time when she submitted the documents to the Registrar in September.
The complainant claimed that she lost her post-doctoral fellowship due to intentional wilful refusal by the Vice-Chancellor to forward her papers. She claimed that this was done as she belonged to an oppressed community.
Registering a complaint, the police forwarded the same to Perur DSP A. Velmurugan for investigation.
As per rules any complaint registered under the SC/ST (PoA) Amendment Act has to be investigated by an officer not below the rank of DSP in rural area.
Syndicate ‘backs’ V-C
However, on Tuesday the university’s Public Relations Officer e-mailed the photocopy of a statement to the media, which supposedly contained the signatures of nine members of the university syndicate, in support of the Vice-Chancellor.
The statement, which was on a white paper sans letterheads, said that the complainant N. Srilakshmi Prabha was an unsuccessful candidate for the post of assistant professor in November 2016. A case filed by her before the High Court challenging the rejection of her candidature was dismissed as withdrawn on March 27. Another case filed by her was pending.
With regard to another charge that Srilakshmi Prabha’s husband being removed from the post of driver on consolidated pay, the statement alleged that her husband R. Kanagaraj had turned up for work on many occasions in an inebriated condition and once he chose to enter the chamber of the Vice-Chancellor forcibly and behaved in an “indecent” and “threatening” manner. Some of the syndicate members were witness to the incident. It was a decision of a four-member committee to remove him from service. None of the above decisions were taken by the Vice-Chancellor and rather the decisions were taken only collectively by the committee and the syndicate, the statement added.
Registrar denies discrimination
The University Registrar alleged that her complaint was motivated due to personal reasons.
The University had sought some clarification from the UGC on her post-doctoral fellowship application.
Though her name was not published in the list of candidates short-listed for the fellowship, the University wrote to the UGC seeking clarification if it had approved of her application. It also wanted to know from the UGC if it had approved of the change in mentor.
